Nancy Rathbun Scott is a writer, editor, marketing strategist, film producer, and entreprenuer whose prolific career has encompassed work for a variety of organizations, both commercial and nonprofit. Nancy has authored five books, written weekly columns for USA Today, produced numerous print and online publications, and regularly pens articles for executive clients. Nancy’s company, Liberty Communications Group (www.libertycommunicationsgroup.com), provides editorial, public relations and marketing consultation. Contact: nancy@nancyscott.com

Mark Rasch delivered the keynote address at the annual meeting of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DC). At the start of his presentation, Rasch posed a question to the audience. “A marketer’s job is to sell to customers. True or not true.” Everybody said true. Maybe it was a trick question, but Rasch surprised…

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The U.S. Postal Service is under siege, but it’s fighting back with new services and PR. Since the first of the year, news streaming from the USPS has been flat-out and rolling. • On January 25, the USPS announced its popular “2nd Ounce Free” pricing in which businesses mailing First-Class Mail automation, presort can mail…

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Smulsh. That’s what I’m getting from the new Google search. When I checked the ranking of my website, Home Invasion News, on Google, first I searched the generic term, “home invasion.” Wow, my “Faces of Home Invasion” graphic showed up second on the list … followed by pages of hits for a variety of articles…

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In mid-March, a new LinkedIn Group — Digital Postal Mail and e-Postal Cloud Solutions — popped up. The first question posed to the group was, “With Doxo, Zumbox, Intuit’s Mint, PageOnce, Pitney Bowes’s Volly, and Manilla leading the way, what demographic is likely to be the first to adopt?” So who are these new digital…

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The CMO Council reports that marketers want an agency partner who can “do it all” — mobile, social, multi-channel, web, search, CRM. Ouch! Is this demand reasonable? It may not matter, since 58 percent of marketers say they aren’t happy — and disgruntled marketers lead to shaky vendor relationships. It happened suddenly last summer when…

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This headline features pretty dramatic words, especially coming from a content marketer. But it’s true: I’m sick of content marketing. Thank heavens, finally, somebody has explained why this once useful approach to sharing with current and prospective customers has become so tiresome. In mid January, Target Marketing featured a great article by Jeff Molander titled…

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On January 20, the U.S. Postal Service released five gorgeous stamps. The artistry of American stamps is nothing new, of course, but this collection reminded me of the potential value of decorative stamps in targeted direct mail campaigns. In searching for high resolution versions of the five stamps, I happened upon a wonderful website, BeyondthePerf.com….

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I’ve been a fan of “trendwatching” for a long time. For example, check out their “12 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2012” here. Of most immediate significance to marketers would be the last paragraph of the landing page. This section offers readers – and marketers – four ways to apply consumer trends. In other words, here’s…

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It’s all over the Internet, stuffed into every eNewsletter, offered up on any website that works, glowing LED at every click. It’s marketing VIDEO. By the end of 2012, we’re going to be seeing so much of it people will begin to ask [all over again] whether “this is the death of print.” Examples? How…

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Becky Graninger, a professional colleague with whom I’ve worked for years and whom I admire a great deal, recently went to work at Barton-Cotton. With a website tagline that says “momentum makes it happen,” Barton-Cotton is busy executing its “reversal of fortune.” To that end, Becky is part of a group of seasoned direct marketers…

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Crowdsourcing our own opinions and relying on others’ is all the rage: Yelp, Angie’s List, Facebook Likes — apparently, we won’t buy anything unless we consult to see if groups of strangers think it’s okay. Crowdsourcing, first name-tagged in a 2006 Wired magazine article, has infiltrated the creative arts, too. For instance, the Japanese are…

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Writing for the upcoming December issue of DMAW’s Marketing AdVents, Greg Curran made a point I’ve been thinking about for some time. Greg is the vice president, group creative director at Merkle. Among other points he made in his article “2012: The Year of The Ampersand,” Greg talked about “specialization and collaboration.” “The rapid growth…

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Luxuriate in the Fresh Air of a Wholesale Dump! Take in the Aroma of Original Content. Ahhhhh! Yes, my friends, I’m talking about the murder of “content aggregation.” It’s an early demise, I know, since aggregation just went mainstream about two years ago.. But, if I have anything to say about it, “content aggregation” is…

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Websites are the corporate/institutional face. Websites tell our story as we wish it to be told. The content, the presentation, the story, the wording — on a website all these are the creation of the creator. Blogs take a small step away, but these mini-articles still tell the corporate story, in the corporate words. The…

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NFC is the acronym for Near Field Communications. So what? Put simply, near field communications (NFC) let devices (like cell phones) that are close to one another (like 4 inches apart) exchange information (like credit card numbers). For those who find that too simple, here’s the real deal from Wikipedia: “Near field communication, or NFC,…

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